Saturday, July 28, 2012

Universe....are you listening?

You guys it's been a hell of a week. Sunday morning I boarded a plane to DC (National Harbor Maryland to be exact) for the annual Ceridian Insights conference. I don't go every year. The last time was in 2010 in Miami. This conference is always a nice mix of fun and education and I was really looking forward to five days of not having to look around my house and think about everything that needs to be painted, pulled, killed, weeded, mowed, mulched, fixed or replaced.

My plan was to enjoy an afternoon by the pool before the welcome reception Sunday night. Instead, I took a nap. But I did make it to the reception. They provide drink tickets, I think to make sure we show up. This strategy works.

Monday afternoon I was in my third training session of the day and I got a text from my dear friend and house/dog sitter, Dee..."Your door is locked to get in the house from the garage. Any ideas how to get in?".

Again??

Six years ago I was in North Carolina with the ex boyfriend for a wedding and we got a panicked call from the next door neighbors who were tending to the dogs. I had only given them the code for the garage, as we don't typically lock the door between the house and garage. Well the garage code thingy wasn't working. I don't remember how they got in, but I think my ex husband came over and helped them break in.

After that I stashed a set of spare keys where they would never be found unless you knew where they were (not that difficult on an acre and a half). These keys open the back man-door to the garage. Surely this will prevent this from ever happening again....

Or not...

So the garage door was open, rendering the spare keys which open the back man door useless. I don't even think I HAVE a key to the door between the house & garage and the spare keys opened only the deadbolt to the front door, not the knob. I, of course, have keys to the front door. But I'm, yaknow, 400 miles away, and The Boy has no keys..he's 17 and I'm lucky he hasn't lost the garage door opener which is in his car. A key wouldn't last ten minutes.

Awesome.

As convenient as it would have been for the NRPD to come over and break in for me on the basis of "Trust me, I live there", they were understandably reluctant. They did, however, agree to see what they could do if The Boy was there with his driver's license proving that this was indeed his primary residence.

When I called The Boy I asked him to go over, explained all of the details including the fact that Dee was able to open the deadbolt on the front door but not the knob and he said "Oh that's no problem, I can get that open"

I didn't ask.

A few minutes later I had a text from Dee stating that The Boy got the front door open. I replied "I'm a little curious as to how he knows how to do that". Her response "So was the police officer"

Great.

Thankfully the rest of the conference went off without a hitch. I saw monuments, I learned a ton of stuff, I made a new friend, I won $64 in one of those phone booth full of flying money things, I made $50 giving my opinion of Ceridian on video, I had some really good meals (too many, too good, unfortunately), I walked my ass off (not literally, again unfortunately).

The trip home was brutal. Long story short I got to the airport at 12:45 and didn't get home until 10:45. We boarded, we deplaned, we waited, we watched the weather, and after hearing that several flights to Chicago and one flight to Cleveland was cancelled due to a really big storm, we were told to board.

I was less than confident in our chances of making it to Cleveland alive.

It was supposed to be a 1 hour & 20 minute flight, it took nearly 3 hours. We mostly went around the storm. We could see sunshine and clear skies on the left of the plane and big black clouds on the right. It was freaky and scary and rough. The pilot said it was the worse weather he had ever flown in.

It was not fun. I prayed a lot.

Then, after four nights of very little sleep, seven hours at the airport in a terminal with malfunctioning air conditioning on a 100 degree day, I arrived at home and climbed into bed at 11:30, knowing I had to work the next morning...and got on the phone to receive what I saw coming a mile away. The old "It's not you, it's me" conversation.

I'm awesome, you see. He's just not ready for a serious relationship.

Sigh.

It's the right call. Totally. It sounds like completely overused BS, and he may THINK he's handing me BS (I don't think so..but I'm also fairly naive). But it's the truth. We're in very different places. I'm six years out of my marriage, and well over a year out of my last serious relationship (which was long dead before he left)...he's less than a year out of his marriage. So if he's just letting me down easy, he's doing a good job of it.

And it really looks like we may even pull off the whole friends thing...we'll see.

So now what? Back to kissing frogs or a break from the whole dating thing? Kinda both. I think I'm going to stay off the online dating thing for a bit. It's exhausting. You really have to kiss A LOT of frogs to find someone with even any minimal amount of prince potential. I honestly don't know any other way to date but maybe if I'm just open to the universe throwing a great guy at me it will happen on its own.

Universe....are you listening?

Maybe he's already here.

Today's lunch...PB & J, the healthy way. Whole wheat bread, organic peanut butter, strawberry all-fruit. I have a lot of making up to do after last week's food-fest.